The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap Highlight

Of course, this mechanism hates some people more than others. In particular, it hates black people. Again, this is not so much about skin color as it is about culture. There’s a cultural spectrum these bureaucracies are attuned to that roughly ranges from black poverty to white wealth. Where you are on that spectrum determines how much of a citizen you get to be. Things that are jailable crimes on one end of that spectrum become speeding tickets on the other. We find white people on the jail end and black people on the speeding ticket end, but for the most part … well, for the most part, you know what I mean. That winking understanding we all share about who gets the book thrown at him and who doesn’t, that’s where American racism has gone: unspoken and hidden, but bureaucratized and automated, and therefore more powerful than ever.